MBDA to set up industrial capability for the demilitarization of complex munitions

Source: MBDA

Under this con­tract MBDA, call­ing on its wealth of expe­ri­ence in the mis­siles and mis­sile sys­tems domain, under­takes to estab­lish with­in two years and with­in nation­al ter­ri­to­ry a facil­i­ty to process clas­si­fied muni­tions in accor­dance with the very strict reg­u­la­tions that apply to defence safe­ty; name­ly oper­a­tional reli­a­bil­i­ty and respect for the envi­ron­ment. In par­tic­u­lar, MBDA will be respon­si­ble for the dis­pos­al before 2017 of more than 1,000 mis­siles, 22,000 M26 rock­ets (the rock­ets for­mer­ly deployed in Mul­ti Launch Rock­et Sys­tems or MLRSs), each con­tain­ing 644 sub-muni­tions, and 13,000 155-mm grenade shells, each con­tain­ing 63 sub-muni­tions – hence more than 15 mil­lion sub-munitions.

The muni­tion pro­cess­ing plant will be installed at MBDA’s Bourges Sub­dray site in cen­tral France. This activ­i­ty rep­re­sents an invest­ment of around €12 mil­lion and should cre­ate about 20 direct jobs.

In order to win the con­tract and estab­lish a high added val­ue facil­i­ty in France, MBDA has brought togeth­er the best skills avail­able on the mar­ket — with ESPLODENTI SABINO and AID in Italy, and NAMMO in Norway.

MBDA’s Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer Antoine Bou­vi­er said: “The demil­i­tari­sa­tion of com­plex weapons has become a new strate­gic activ­i­ty for MBDA. This fits in per­fect­ly with our deter­mi­na­tion to estab­lish close and sus­tain­able part­ner­ships with our domes­tic and export cus­tomers. These cus­tomers not only require guar­an­teed avail­abil­i­ty and sus­tained sup­port for their equip­ment, but also that we ensure the safe end of life dis­pos­al of their com­plex weapons as well”.